My fault for going on twitter BUT WHAT THE FUCK DOES “BEING A STALINIST” MEAN IN FUCKING 2022? This is basically shit stirring against an imaginary boogeyman

    • fayyhana [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      The common online pitfall I see MLs fall into is buying into the whole 4 quadrant political compass meme and thus proclaiming themselves as "pro-authoritarian" to prove they aren't anarchists. No one should be pro authority for authority's sake, it's just we think a transitional state is necessary to defend the revolution from the forces of capital.

      Honestly the 4 quadrant political compass has gotta be one of the better online psyops for disrupting left unity.

      • BolsheWitch [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        exactly, authority is a mechanism to affect change and organize. Unjust authority is antithetical to the tenants of Marxism anyways, as all power/authority must come from the workers and belong to the workers.

        Some short snippets of an already very short piece by Engels

        Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.

        On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals.

        Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?

        Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.

        Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.

        Skipping ahead to two examples:

        Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

        But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.

        Saying your "pro-authoritarian" is like saying you're "pro-screwdriver". It's a tool to make things happen, not an identity lol

    • BolsheWitch [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      stares at infrared, "patriotic socialists", and all the gonzalo-stans

      yeah...radlibs aren't just larping as anarchists. It's a problem throughout the left in the imperial core.

    • CrimsonSage [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Because radlibs looking to be more revolutionary than they are feel safe adopting Anarchistic labels and some leftist language. Generally speaking, only people who have really read, understand, and internalize the literature call themselves a ML, not because ML's are somehow superior but because they are "The Bad Guys." On the other hand any Radlib can read the introduction to the Bread book, or whatever Anarchist text they havent actually read, and claim to be an Anarchist.

    • SaniFlush [any, any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Because we keep letting the Lisa Simpsons of the world talk for some reason

    • Owl [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Just looks different when MLs do it. Confused baby MLs go around accusing everyone of being revisionist or Kautskyites or whatever.